• M. Granger Morgan, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
• Eric Barron, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
• Molly Olsen, former staff director, President's Council on Sustainable Development
• Walter Reid, World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C.
• Mike Rodemeyer, U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee, Washington, D.C.
• Blair Henry, Northwest Council on Climate Change, Seattle, WA
• Robert Friedman, Heinz Center, Washington, D.C.

M. Granger Morgan, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

The scenarios should not just be thin descriptions of a couple of possible alternative climate futures, but fairly thick scenarios carrying a reasonable amount of detail and explanation which also fill in the socioeconomic details. I don't think a scenario should be our "best guess" - instead say to the scientists "Give me some interesting alternative futures and let's see how they play out at the local and regional level.

Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University talked of the importance of private sector involvement, and of the need for "thick" scenarios with both climate and socio-economic information. The following were his key points:

• There has got to be much more involvement by the private sector, especially by major industries, if the process is going to succeed. Without their participation in the future, this enterprise is just not going to be successful.

• The assessment's steering committee should be put into motion as quickly as possible and should be heavily involved in the process of reviewing and vetting the scenarios.

• The scenarios should not just be thin descriptions of a couple of possible alternative climate futures, but fairly thick scenarios, carrying a reasonable amount of detail and explanation which also fill in the national details about the key social, economic, and other issues, not just climate. To remain feasible, keep the number of scenarios to three or four, in a range from rosy to pessimistic.

• The education and information dissemination should continue to receive a major effort.

• There are many research questions we'll never be able to answer. Efforts should not just be bottom up, but once the scenarios have been created, the coordinating group itself ought to work with experts to ask questions about what we need to know and hope to know to do better regional assessments.

• Identify places where there might be large amplifier effects, e.g. disasters such as large storms in the East that could crash the insurance industry.

• It is important to place climate change in the historical context of past changes and with other major stressors already operating in our society; rather than focusing on doom and gloom scenarios, acknowledge that some climate change impacts will be dwarfed by other issues, problems and impacts.

I'd like to make a statement of my personal commitment towards this assessment we are about to undertake. We have a case in which society is leading science in the direction that science wants to go anyway because of the nature of the problems. This, I think, is a wonderful opportunity and one that is truly compelling as a task....

Eric Barron of Pennsylvania State University further discussed the scenario needs for the assessment, emphasized the need to prioritize issues and topics, and talked about the need for new sources of funding. The following were his key points:

• I would like to echo this notion of the thick scenarios, but I would like to point out from my own community perspective what this means in terms of particular climate issues. Global circulation models project to the year 2100 where you can see significant changes, but it is very clear that these assessments now need to include a short term view, a regional view, including severe weather; indeed, including a basis which is weather.

• Second, there is too much on the table here, meaning that we're not going to be able to do a credible job. Thus, we need to do a prioritization. We need to take advantage of what is uniquely important about the different regions as they go through their assessments.

• Third, I think we have to recognize how different a lot of these topics are. In a lot of cases, there may be very practical responses. But I've noticed that some issues are quite different, and ecosystems is one case where it appeared to be very different in terms of the availability of response options.

• Fourth, we need to make sure that this assessment is real. If there is a major relabeling of what we're already doing in this nation in terms of a focus on assessment, I think we're going to be in deep trouble and we're going to walk out of the starting gate and some of us are going to end up being frustrated. I don't think, as a community, that we can tolerate the notion that no new dollars can go into this particular area.

• Fifth, when we go from sectors and regions to a national assessment, we need to make sure that value is added, that it isn't the sum of a series of bullets.

• Sixth, I'm struck by the importance of education and beginning this process and making sure that we don't give it up. It's not K through 12, it's everybody educating themselves.

He noted that we are now at a completely different level where we can combine expertises to address this problem. As he stated: "It allows me to maintain my integrity as a climate person, knowing that I've got a partner out there in these other disciplines, so that I'm not playing an armchair game." He concluded by saying that the interaction of experts will :catalyze what we will do for decades to come" just by making sure that we have these communities face-to-face.

We have a systems problem here; the whole climate change problem is a systems problem, and it requires systems solutions. What do we need to address a systems problem? We need a common vision of where we're going, we need a common language to communicate, and we need a set of principles that can help us to guide action.

Molly Olsen, the former staff director of the President's Council on Sustainable Development talked about the need for strong policy, and the opportunities for the private sector. The following were her key points:

• When we talk about building a common language or a common knowledge base, it is clear that this is a major opportunity and a major activity of this whole assessment process. By the nature of these regional and sectoral working groups, it is building a common language and knowledge base so that we can all move forward, and there is great value in and of itself in that coordination. These processes are very important; there is the need to balance consensus with consultation and with the need for education and dissemination.

• I think the opportunities are there, but I actually think that those are going to be identified by the business sector, and I think that the business community has an opportunity to really be the environmental leaders of the next century. I think that is happening already in a number of major organizations, although small, percentage-wise, at this time. In fact, there is a great opportunity for business invention and innovation, and I suspect that they are going to be in a better position than we are to articulate and to make real those opportunities.

• Along those lines, I would say that critical for success, consistent with the Montreal Protocol, is strong policy. I am sure I'm not the only one that is concerned about the focus on feasibility. There was a study done at the business school at Stanford [University] by a couple of professors there. The book they came out with was entitled "Built to Last"; it was a great book because it studied the most successful financial companies and one of the common characteristics or principles by which they operated was having what they called gigantic, audacious goals that you couldn't possibly figure out how you were going to accomplish, necessarily; but it was important for the companies' innovation and success, to actually set huge and almost unachievable goals.

This could probably be one of the most complex and complicated assessments undertaken because of the variety of audiences that the process will speak to. I don't think that's insoluble, but I do think that we need to insure that people buy into who those audiences, and they try to shape their recommendations to reach those specific audiences.

Walter Reid of the World Resources Institute talked about the need to understand the audience or audiences for the assessment, to assure a common set of questions, and to have a strong communications element. The following were his key points:

• We need to get agreement on who those audiences are. This assessment will certainly influence research priorities; it will help business flag problems and opportunities; certainly important audiences are at the state and local level; and it will generate public awareness. So you have a diverse set of audiences that you want to reach with a single assessment, and I know of no other assessment that has tried to reach so many audiences. I don't think that's insoluble, but I do think that we need to ensure that people buy into who those audiences are, and they try to shape their recommendations to reach those specific audiences.

• Second, to obtain a national synthesis, we need to ensure that all of the regional and sectoral groups are addressing a common set of questions and gathering a common set of data. In my experience with the biodiversity assessment, when we tried to develop a synthesis of all of the work that had been done, we discovered that there were some major gaps that were just logically central to a synthesis that hadn't been covered in any of the individual pieces. At a minimum, I would recommend that the synthesis team work in parallel with the regional processes, but also have the synthesis group take a first cut at what it would look like and then communicate it to the regional and sectoral groups.

• Third, the process is going to need to be very transparent for not only the participants but for other interested individuals. All of the successful assessments have placed emphasis on review and consultation.

• Finally, a process like this, because of the many audiences, needs to be very strong on the communications end and you shouldn't short-change yourself. One of the things to consider in this is that you are very likely going to need multiple products, for Congress, business executives, etc.

I want to speak to you about Congress as a specific audience for this assessment. It is a very different audience from the scientific community, from the executive branch, or to the world community as a whole, not the least is that some members of Congress would like to do nothing more than change the channel. They want to look for data not theory, they want to look for facts not models.

Mike Rodemeyer, a senior staff member of the House Science Committee provided a perspective on what Congress might be looking for in this assessment, and described the skepticism of a large number of members about this issue. The following were his key points:

• The reality is that there is a large number in Congress that is deeply skeptical about climate change and about environmental issues in general. Let me discuss some of the challenges that this assessment will face under this kind of scrutiny:

• This segment of Congress believes that the science has been politicized in this area; that scientists are just another special interest group who have an interest in scare-mongering in order to either promote the liberal agenda or create enough public concerns to provide public support for increasing their research funds.

• I think there is skepticism about our ability to predict anything about the future. The efforts in the 1970's, for example, the limits-to-growth type of models, have largely been rejected by Congress; they feel we simply don't have the analytical tools to predict very competently what the future will bring. In particular, the argument is that our efforts in the past have grossly under-represented the adaptive capabilities of the dynamic market economy and our ability to innovate around problems. I think there is fair amount of justification in that argument.

• I think there is skepticism about environmental risks in general, in that we may be wasting resources on risks that are relatively low either in terms of severity or probability or a combination of both. I think the issue of probability is a serious constraint to the concerns here. Also, there is concern about the cost-benefit analysis; is the solution worse than the problem? What if climate change is a lot more moderate than we all are predicting today?

• Specifically with respect to the regional impacts issue, there is skepticism about the global circulation models, that is, that they are inherently unverifiable until we get there. They want to look for data, not theory; they want to look for facts, not models. And even if you believe the climate models, there is still such a wide range of impacts that it makes the policy decisions very difficult.

• So what is it that Congress wants to know? Some understanding of the big picture, an indication of how good the science is, how confident we are in the findings, and to what extent it has been subjected to peer review. And finally, interpretation: what does the science mean in terms of policy discussions? In a sense, we are asking for a risk assessment.

• Finally, what I think an assessment should not be is a long-term list of research needs. We don't have money to do that and I think that the research that is going to be needed to be done is going to have to be set in terms of priorities, not just based on scientific curiosity, but what kinds of research are most likely to pay off in terms of answering some of the key questions of policy makers.

I suggest the synthesis should be short, simple and engaging. Bill Nye (the "Science Guy") came to dinner with us one night. I started with, "Gee, this is a very complicated topic." He literally jumped in and said, "It's not complicated; I teach it to ten year olds every week. They get it. It's big, but it's not hard.

Blair Henry of the Northwest Council on Climate Change provided a perspective on what would interest and engage educated members of the public. The following are his key points:

• I suggest the synthesis be should be short, simple and engaging. It has to be drafted in a way that they read it. If they don't read it, its over. You and I know what we pick up and read and what we don't.

• I think it would make the biggest difference if, after people read it, they were interested in climate change, that they were engaged and, most importantly, they were acting on it. If people fear it is too complicated, they are gone. There is a fine line between complicated and too complicated.

• Then, there is the issue of climate "change". There is nothing inherently good or bad about change, it's just change. What you think is good or bad only talks about what you're vested in. There is another thing about change, though: it is almost inherently upsetting, because if you have expectations about the way things are going to be, if you build your life around it and things change, you may be upset. So, in our role in synthesis, make people aware and give them the opportunity to prepare. This is not something that should be sprung on people or hit them right between the eyes.

• The other part of this is that many people think, "It's too big, I'm too small, I can't do anything about it." But of course you can do something about it because you do something about it every single day. The only question there is, what kind of difference would you like to make? Because we're going to see some impacts from some of those decisions, and we'll see different kinds of impacts down the road depending on the decisions you make.

• I think it is incumbent upon us to give people options of what they can do. When it comes to coping, we can educate people a lot that this is coming, but everyone is left with, "What can I do?" Everybody must know what to do.

• Lastly, there are opportunities in this. I'm a lot more interested in opportunities in this than I am in gloom-and-doom. So, I want you to understand that the energy industry, which is over a trillion dollars a year worldwide, is going to fundamentally change in composition over a relatively short period of time. It will have to move to something else. There are enormous opportunities for other sources of energy; there are also going to be a lot of opportunities in energy conservation and efficiencies.

Looking at the assessment design right now, the richness of the regional involvement is unlike any other domestic activity that I am aware of, and lack of involvement of public participation is always characteristic.

Robert Friedman of the Heinz Center applauded the bottoms-up strategy being pursued in engaging regions throughout the country. He also talked about bringing policy to the forefront. The following were his key points:

• We should think very carefully about the goals; yesterday Jack Gibbons said, understand the vulnerabilities to climate change, learn how to manage the research program and make sure it identifies policy options for adapting to climate change.

• A bottoms-up regional assessment will help achieve that first goal (of understanding vulnerability). If you believe that if you have a reasonably meaningful set of regional scenarios you might proceed in a radically different manner looking at systems resiliency. I have a preference for vulnerability analysis as a desired goal.

• Starting with impact assessment, with the hopes that the policy analysis can be deferred until later, this just does not work. As evidence, there is the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program whose conclusion was that a lack of strong policy focus throughout the program was a major flaw; and secondly, from the now-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, reviewing why their assessments worked, we found that consideration of policy options started almost from Day One; their least successful assessments were where they spent most of their time getting the science and technology right and going off on what amounted to many unnecessary tangents.

• There are some timing questions here as well: there seem to be some differences of opinion about whether we are talking about focusing on impacts 25 years out or 100 years out. Again, depending on our goal, we may have very different views in mind. Obviously, the scenarios that we would choose would be very different depending on whether we want to know where we're going to be in 25 years or in 100 years.

• If we want to accomplish all the goals, the best approach may be to undertake additional activities rather than trying to achieve all goals with one single assessment.